


Exhaustion is a powerful thing

by HorologiumParadox



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Based on a True Story, Confessions, Earth C, First Kiss, Fluff, I love them so much, M/M, Post-Canon, Sleepy confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24783340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorologiumParadox/pseuds/HorologiumParadox
Summary: In the haze of a post-movie, 4 a.m. sleepy goodnight wish, Karkat and Dave say more than they intend to.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 12
Kudos: 130





	Exhaustion is a powerful thing

“Holy shit.” Karkat glares at the TV screen, hunching over his knees on the couch. “I’ve watched a lot of crap in my life, but that was borderline _physically_ painful.”

“Two missed hours of sleep have never been so missed.” Dave yawns, letting his head slowly drop onto the back of the couch. “Their parents have filed a report and are putting up signs, regretting having an argument over their outfit before they left for school.” He rants, just a beat slower than usual. “No, scratch that: two hours of _life_ are gone. Those are 120 minutes I’m never getting back, Karkat. Remember that on my deathbed.”

“You’re immortal, idiot.” He ungracefully rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, as if smearing the deep shades of his eyebags. “I should be the one saying that, since I, for some sadistic reason of fate, am not.”

Dave tilts his head ever so lazily in Karkat’s general direction. “Shut up. No way you’re gonna die after beating the game. That would be some grade-A fertilizer bullshit.” He pauses, considering. “Fuck, that sounds exactly like something the game construct would do. Motherfucker.”

Karkat snorts, eyes barely arguably open. “Let’s not go there right now. I’m so tired I can’t even get worked up about the possibility of dying, be it a near or distant vulture. Future.” He scrunches up his face at the way his words are getting increasingly slurred.

“Yeah, that’s our cue. Let’s a call it a day, enough mistakes for today.” Dave says, frowning at the unsuspecting television.

They both unravel themselves from their comfortable positions on the couch and stretch, Karkat popping his posture pole and Dave cracking his neck on both sides. They hadn’t intended to stay up late, but after they’d finished another tooth-rotting drama Karkat had suggested, Dave had caught a glance at some intriguing synopsis for a movie (for all the wrong, ironic reasons) and convinced (blackmailed) his housemate to sit through the experience with him.

It hadn’t paid off.

Of course, seeing Karkat almost literally squirming from how absolutely fucking shitty that jumble of poorly edited, unfocused, off-shot images of characters whose lines could have easily been written by a eight-year-old on a sugar high tied in a beaten-to-death old carcass of a plot developed in front of their poor retinas had been very high levels of amusing, but it didn’t really compensate for the sheer lack of...well, everything of that movie. Dave is pretty sure he can come up with something better using only unpublished Hella Jeff sketches and samples from his turntables strung together with the Earth C equivalent of Movie Maker. Who is he trying to fool, that piece would probably win the Oscar, if they still had such a thing.

Still, now he’s quite a few hours behind on sleep and has to get up before 10 a.m. the next day because...he can’t quite remember, but he knows it’s important and trusts his sleep-aided, freshly renewed morning future self to have better memory than his current self.

While Dave ponders why the fuck he would ever schedule anything before lunch ever, there is a loud _thump_ somewhere to his right.

“FUCK!”

“Are you ok over there, dude?” He calls out to the shriveling bundle of oversized clothes currently crouching suspiciously close to a corner in the hallway, having half a mind to turn off the TV before approaching him.

“Fucking walls appearing out of nowhere.” He grumbles, rubbing his right horn with a grimace. “Is this what it would feel like to be drunk on human alcohol?”

Dave chuckles, leaning on the opposite wall. “No clue, bro. Never got around to that kind of buzz.” After a beat, he smiles. “Though there was that time at Rosemary’s wedding. I don’t know what that shit was, but I bet my left kidney we didn’t have that back on Earth.”

Karkat makes a face of a war veteran. “Oh god, don’t remind me of that fucking shitshow.”

“Oh come on, everyone was happy.” Upon meeting Karkat’s glare, he corrects himself: “Well, almost everyone. Still got a pretty good quota to work with. But hey, at least no one got hurt, right?” Once again the tired, red-rimmed eyes remind him of the truth. “Except I guess that waiter. That poor, poor waiter.” Dave winces, reminiscing of the episode. A towel. A candlestick. A waiter. “Anyway, that’s pretty close to getting wasted. The hangover, too, I think. Being tired out of your mind just makes your brain lag behind, it doesn’t really, y’know. Make you say shit you don’t mean, or hook up with people you don’t really care about.”

Karkat frowns. Yep, he surely didn’t mention anything about hooking up, but fuck if he isn’t too sleepy to argue. “Whatever. Let’s just go to sleep.”

Dave swings himself off the wall and heads for his room. “Just don’t pass out on the bathroom. The Strider Tow Service has the fee of two (2) embarrassing pictures per call, and no refunds.”

Karkat follows, turning to his own block. “I’d rather drool all over the cold tiles in my bathroom all night, asshole.” The last word distorts around a yawn, and it’s a miracle he’s still standing. Dave swallows back a smile at how endearing the sight is.

“G’night, Karkat.” He opens the door to his bedroom.

On the other end, Karkat slumps against the handle and mumbles, “G’night, Dave. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Both doors shut within a heartbeat. 

From his room, Dave hears a few steps and a soft _thud_ from the other side of the hallway, and vaguely wonders if he should be worried. He’s so quick to worry and jump to action, especially when it comes to Karkat. Of course, he’s plainly aware of the reason, he’s made peace with that for some time now, but never got the courage to tell him for...motives. Yeah, sure, he has completely reasonable, sane, healthy reasons for not telling his best friend who very probably felt the same how much he means to him. Dave wonders if he’s ever going to...

It takes Dave a moment too long to process what just happened.

Once he does, he’s suddenly Very Fucking Awake and flying so hard at and off the handle he might as well have been making an acrobatic fucking pirouette out of it. In a flash, he’s pressed flush against Karkat’s door.

“Karkat? Are you awake?”

He hears a soft gasp very clearly from the other side. The noise he heard earlier must’ve been Karkat falling back on the door. Crap.

“I-- uh.” Really eloquent, Dave, congratulations. Lexicon? Tight. Syntax? Nailed it. Enunciation? Flawless. “Can we talk? I think maybe we should talk. Unless...” He swallows around a lump in his throat, over the loud beating of his heart. “Unless you were just zombie-talking or something.”

Deep into the night like this, every second of static feels unbearably long. His pulse is ringing in his ears, breath labored against the hard surface of Karkat’s door. After what seems like too long and still not enough to prepare him for this conversation, he hears Karkat’s mumbled answer, which doesn’t help much:

“...Were _you_?”

Dave half understands, but asks anyway: “What?”

Karkat sighs and croaks out, “Were you just saying back out of...fuck, I don’t know. Out of habit?”

Dave rolls his eyes, feeling exasperated already. “Sure, Karkat, because everyone knows I have the habit of telling people I love them.” Sarcasm was likely not the best way to go about this, but he couldn’t help himself. It was probably in his blood. “‘Dave Strider? Oh yeah, the big lovable Care Bear that sprinkles his love over every lucky passerby on Earth C! He’s a swell fella, also makes some sweet poetry on his spare time.’”

The house is completely silent once again and Dave fears he might’ve fucked for good when there’s shuffling inside the room and, after a few seconds of hesitation, the door opens to reveal a wide-awake, somewhat rumpled Karkat on the other side. _Huh. Can’t believe that worked._

“Can I come in?”

Karkat nods. It’s dark, but upon closer inspection, even behind his shades, Dave can tell his grey cheeks are darkened with the color of his blood. It’s god damn adorable, and Dave thinks his body might be trying to replicate the look on his own face. He ignores the heat of his own skin and walks in, plopping down backwards on his ass and hands on the bed.

“So…” he starts, then seemingly loses all capability of compiling words into a cohesive sentence.

“I’m sorry.”

Karkat can’t see it, but Dave blinks a few times before whipping his head around to where the troll is perched beside the door. He looks guarded and uneasy, as if it pains him to be in the room at that moment.

Dave realizes he’s been silent for too long when Karkat runs a hand through his hair and crosses his arms across his chest. Fuck, he looks tired. “Look, Dave, can we just pretend nothing happened and go about our business as fucking normal? At this point you’re my fucking best friend and I don’t want to--”

“I meant it,” Dave blurts out, panicking at the turn Karkat’s thinking had taken.

That seems to effectively shut him up, though. Gives Dave room to work with.

“I know you didn’t mean it platonically, Karkat. There’s no ‘no homo’ing out of this one, bro.” He vividly feels how hypocritical that sounds, and he can tell Karkat thinks so too, but he keeps going. “But I uh...how do I put this…?” Dave scratches his head, feeling grateful for his specs even if it’s dark as fuck. “I want to know what that means. Quadrant-wise or something.”

Karkat’s eyes are bright against the dark background, watching him. With caution, he steps up to the bed and sits beside Dave. He looks down at his hands with a deep slouch.

“I...don’t know.” Dave arches a brow and Karkat must feel it, because he frowns and clicks his tongue. “I mean, I definitely feel red for you, and I really like you for who you are, but then, there are also these feelings that are common in pale and also black relationships, so... I really don’t know. I guess at some point, I just felt like your human ‘love’ described it better and threw it around my mind to see how It felt.” He seems to remember himself and jolts, bringing his knees up on the bed and hugging them. “So yeah...that’s pretty fucking ‘homo’ after all, Dave.”

Dave is biting his lip to stop himself from breaking out in nervous laughter. There’s a chance he might still do it, despite himself. “Is it--”

Karkat, currently busying himself with finding out just how much it’s physically possible to shove his face into his knees, looks at Dave from the corner of his eyes. “What?”

“Is it safe to assume...you want to erm--”

Dave shoves a hand on his face, openly acknowledging the full-face flush spreading towards the tips of his ears and the bottom of his neck. Karkat perks up a bit when he notices it.

“You want to, like. Kiss and stuff.” What the fuck is he _saying_ when he hasn’t even cleared up that 4 a.m. piss-poor excuse for a confession to his _best fucking friend_? “With me.”

Karkat seems to share the thought, but isn’t about to argue, either. “Yeah, you idiot. I fucking do.” He returns to the comfort of his arms and adds, in a muffled whisper: “A lot.”

Dave’s whole body is buzzing with adrenaline, sweating profusely and feeling like it might combust at any given moment. His crush is literally right next to him, admitting to having feelings for him and saying he really fucking wants to kiss him. It shouldn’t be hard to decide what to do, but Dave’s head is still rushing with easy way outs and escape routes instead of doing what his heart knows to do.

So he swallows, trying to steady his shaky hands before reaching up and taking off his shades. He sets them on the other side of the bed, then turns to Karkat. “Dude, come here.”

Karkat only has about a second to be in awe of Dave’s bare eyes before being startled out of his mind by a set of warm lips on his. It takes him a few seconds to register the feat and close his eyes to let the kiss sink in. Dave takes that as a green light and places a hand on the side of his neck to press closer.

For two people who had never thought this moment would actually happen outside their minds, the real experience is mind-blowing. Even with such little actual physical contact, it seems as if their whole bodies are burning, and all those other clichès you’ve probably heard a hundred times before. But well, you’ve heard it a hundred times before for a reason, and that is because it’s fucking true.

After a few moments, Dave pulls back, but stays in close vicinity of the Karkat Lips™️. Coming back from that moment feels a lot like unfreezing time, he absently thinks.

“That...felt pretty sweet.”

Karkat snorts, out of incredulity or nervousness, who knows. “Yeah, it fucking did.”

“Wanna do it again?” Dave breathes out with a charming grin, arching an eyebrow.

Karkat actually laughs. “You’re impossible, Strider. You think you’re gonna get away like this? Fuck you, you know this discussion is not over.”

Yes, he knows, and thinks it’s rude of Karkat to not pretend that he doesn’t. “What do you mean? You like me, I like you, we like smooching, and that’s really all there is to say on matter. I thought you were on board here.” He bumps Karkat’s shoulder softly. “On board of the smooching train, that is.”

“Dave. C’mon.” Karkat has a ghost of a smile on his face, but pulls himself together, which means he’s probably serious. “I’m serious.” See?

“Alright.” Dave folds a leg on the bed to better face Karkat. He feels self-conscious without his glasses, but thinks it’s only fair that he feels as exposed as Karkat most likely feels.

“Karkat, my man, my dude, my manbro...”

“Dave.”

“My bestie, my brother-in-arms, my wingman…”

“ _Dave_.”

“My pal, my comrade, my chum…”

“DAVE.”

“My most honorable--”

“DAVE I SWEAR TO FUCK--”

“My outerspace crush.”

“-!!”

Dave smirks, gaining traction. “My strikingly hot best friend. My insufferable hobgoblin housemate. My unexpected long-time love. And, well, if you want to, I guess…” He ducks his head, pulling on a coy smile, Karkat-only edition. “My alien boyfriend.”

“Fuck, Dave, what a fucking messy way to say it,” Karkat whines, but he’s a shade redder than before, so it means his heart is moved. “It’s just like you, though, you prick.”

Dave smirks at the endearing pet name and decides to mess him up further. “I love you, Karkat.”

Karkat’s face seems to simultaneously scrunch up and relax, which is such an absurd sight that Dave has to hold back a bark of laughter, because only Karkat could ever pull that shit off. Instead, he throws his arms around his neck and pulls him close, wondering if his pulse is as loud as it seems to his ears. For once, he counts time in heartbeats, and not the ever-present ticking of a clock in his mind.

Karkat hugs him back, only pulling back after a while to mumble “I love you too, Dave,” and claim his mouth again.

As Dave begins to unravel the texture of Karkat’s mouth and the patterns of his skin, somewhere in the house, a digital display marks 5 a.m.

He vaguely remembers an early appointment in some timeline.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah it's me again with the tooth-rotting fluff. I just want these two ridiculous fuckers to be happy together, is it a fucking crime???
> 
> Shout-out to albapuella again for reading and feedbacking (Idk if that's a word, the English language is a metal railing and I'm freestyling). It boosts my confidence to have someone read the shit I write beforehand so I know it's just stupid and not plain embarrassing, so thanks!


End file.
